


Propriety

by bukkunkun



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Fireworks, Fourth of July, Love Confessions, Tsunderes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bukkunkun/pseuds/bukkunkun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was about to yell at her that he wasn’t going to comply—he never will comply, but instead he opted to stay quiet, as he processed the thoughts that just surfaced in his mind.</p><p>Soldier, pretty? What were the odds.</p><p>Merasmus couldn’t understand what he was thinking of—he had always been annoyed at his roommate, one way or another, and he had never taken the time to really take a good look at her.</p><p>Come to think of it, he had only seen her face so many times, and all those times, it was half-obscured by her helmet anyway. </p><p>He never realised how blue Soldier’s eyes were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Propriety

**Author's Note:**

> Genderbent mercenaries, because I AM IN LOVE WITH FEMSOLLY YOU GUYS DON'T UNDERSTAND
> 
> ALSO MAGIC MISSILES WHY U NO MORE POPULAR SADJGKAIDBFKA';GKAFLA;'G
> 
> Aaanyway. Wrote this because there ain't enough Magic Missiles in the world, plus it was July 4 last Thursday. I know I'm late, but it's okay because this fic is A M E R I C A N
> 
> Right. Enjoy!

When Merasmus had heard of his new roommate, all he knew was that she was a woman, and one that had a rather nice salary that would easily sustain her share of their apartment.

He had been expecting a woman with great stature—a doctor, a professor, a famous actress (if he was lucky enough, but he knew that wishes turned out rotten most of the time), and whatnot. A woman with great power and influence in her youth, at least.

He had  _not_  been expecting a loud-mouthed American soldier who perpetually barked in conversations with each spoken word like an order, her voice strained slightly with a certain husk he knew he heard from sergeants who yelled at their subordinates.

Soldier was an interesting woman, at least—she was, putting it in kind terms, anyway—a woman of her own strength, refusing always to back down and come out on top, with a rocket launcher in her arm, and a folding shovel in another. Sometimes, it was a pickaxe, and Merasmus had always wondered why she refused to use the yellow grenades across her chest.

It didn't help that she was insufferably patriotic.

"Merasmus!" she screamed as loudly as always, kicking the door to his room open with a bare foot as she stormed inside. "It's the Fourth of July!"

"For goodness sake, Soldier!" the wizard growled back, sitting up to glare at her. "It's three in the mor—where are your  _clothes_?" his voice raised in pitch as embarrassment flooded his senses upon seeing his roommate dressed in nothing but the flag of the USA, red, white and blue sparklers in each of her hands and her helmet that covered her face was painted over (rather messily, Merasmus thought) with the American flag.

He couldn't still get over the fact that she was, in essence,  _fully naked_.

"The clothes here are not American!" she grinned, snickering, bouncing over to Merasmus's bed to wave the sparklers in the man's face. "All that's here are stuff you got, you maggot fruit basket," she waved the sparklers in her left hand to emphasize her point, as three or four raccoons rushed into the room after her.

"Running into my room at three in the morning is hardly proper!" he retorted, waving his hand with a roll of his eyes, as Soldier's usual uniform appeared on her body beneath the American flag. "Naked, even more so!"

"Propriety is for maggots!" she barked, "Americans don't need propriety! We threw the tea in that damn harbour because of those little English  _ladies_ ," she drawled sarcastically, before jumping onto the wizard's bed (boots and all, and the wizard cringed; he was going to have to  _wash_  those sheets), sending Merasmus back down onto his back, looking up at her with wide, surprised eyes and he realised that he had made a mistake regarding her uniform.

The boots he gave her were knee-high high heels, with lots of buckles and worn leather, he noted, as she brought her right foot up right beneath his chin to tilt his head up to look at her.

"It's America's freedom day today, Merasmus—you are going to celebrate it!" she ordered, her face half-hidden as always beneath her helmet, and it infuriated the magician beneath her, because he was without his own headgear.

She could see clearly his embarrassment, then.

"I will meet you at 0500 hours outside!" she ordered, suddenly pulling her foot away from him to jump down the bed with less grace than he had hoped.

It did help, however, when she tripped, unused to the shoes she wore, her face planting right onto the floor, behind raised in the air almost comically, as her helmet fell off her head.

Merasmus would have laughed at her—like he usually did, but then the thought of Soldier in those high heels was something he rather enjoyed. Her behind in the air was rather plush, in his opinion—

And here, he froze. He had never thought of her that way before, and a blush of both embarrassment and mortification crossed his face as she stood up from the ground, grumbling about "stupid Commie shoes and goddamn not-American footwear". She whirled around to face him, and for once, Merasmus got a look at her face.

Her hair, (blonde,  _of course_. How very American, he thought) was cut short, barely brushing her shoulders in smooth-looking curls. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line as blue eyes glared right at him.

She looked rather pretty like that.

Merasmus paused again, and his mind raced with thoughts as Soldier looked around the room for her helmet, before picking it up and tossing it onto her head, hiding that look on her face from the world again as she headed for the door, the four raccoons in tow.

"0500 hours, Merasmus!" she told him, before leaving the room.

He was about to yell at her that he wasn't going to comply—he  _never_  will comply, but instead he opted to stay quiet, as he processed the thoughts that just surfaced in his mind.

Soldier, pretty? What were the odds.

Merasmus couldn't understand what he was thinking of—he had always been annoyed at his roommate, one way or another, and he had never taken the time to really take a good look at her.

Come to think of it, he had only seen her face so many times, and all those times, it was half-obscured by her helmet anyway.

He never realised how blue Soldier's eyes were.

The smell of something burning caught his attention, however, and Merasmus's eyes widened to see that Soldier had also dropped her sparklers on the ground, and they were now burning through his carpet and the wooden flooring.

Merasmus felt something boil inside of him, as he threw his head back and yelled in annoyance.

"Soldier!"

* * *

What he had been thinking about her was highly inappropriate, he later thought, as he allowed Soldier to drag him up the stairs to the top of some godforsaken building somewhere at the back of her workplace's facility. He had been there before, of course, when he had come there to kill her teammates.

They had spent the entire day messing around with the mercenaries (rather,  _Soldier_ had, he was just there because she dragged him along—he then found out that day that her teammate the Engineer wasn't that bad a person, and the soft-spoken Texas girl had apologised to him on behalf of her friend's antics), handing out red, white and blue sparklers to her entire team, even to those members who weren't American.

Merasmus had remembered having to explain himself to a sceptic-looking Medic as he handed her a white sparkler. The look her Heavy was giving him did  _not_ help.

The fact that he tried killing them—well, let's just say he stayed  _well_  away from the two.

Demo didn't seem to mind the ruckus, after Soldier had handed her a beer, anyway. The two women were dancing around, singing a garbled version of  _The Star-Spangled Banner_ rather badly, while Scout chased after them with her own set of sparklers, laughing brightly.

Merasmus didn't bother approaching both Sniper and Spy, but Pyro seemed happy enough to take some sparklers by itself.

The shenanigans continued well to the evening, after a ribs-and-barbecue dinner by Engineer, followed by apple strudel that Medic had made. Soldier had complained about this, at how "un-American" it was, but since none of them knew how to bake an apple pie, Engineer had reasoned, telling off her American friend, they would have to settle for Medic's strudel.

It wasn't that bad—in fact, Merasmus had managed to enjoy it. He told her his sentiments (albeit in a roundabout way—"I'll be less likely to kill you now, if you made strudel like that", and whatnot) and that had somehow managed to end him at the receiving end of a heavy back-slap by the doctor's self-appointed meat-shield. Whether it was friendly or not still escaped him.

His back still hurt from it, actually, even at 8 in the evening. The moon was high above their heads as they came to a stop on top of the roof, Soldier grinning and snickering brightly as she let go of Merasmus's wrist to rush over to the edge of the roof, the magician following after her, grumbling at the pain in his wrist from her iron grip.

"Exactly what are we doing here?" he asked her, slowly settling down next to his roommate at the edge of the roof. Their legs hung off the side, and Merasmus saw that she was still wearing the boots he had conjured on her that morning.

"Watching the show," she simply replied, gesturing down below them. Merasmus looked down to see the rest of the team gathered together on the ground below them, save for Sniper and Spy, (he guessed they were up in the sharpshooter's loft, doing God-knows-what while they waited for whatever Soldier was excited about) seated together around a fire Pyro had lit. Engineer and Pyro were just a way ahead of them, setting up what looked like a bunch of brightly-coloured rockets that were arranged in such a strange manner it made Merasmus raise an eyebrow.

"Soldier, is there going to be an attack?" he asked, confused, and the American turned to look at him, her helmet swaying on her head slightly, but still hiding whatever expression she had on her face. The little frown on her lips was the only indicator of her confusion.

"An attack on what? Today's—"

"America's independence day, yes," he cut her off, "But why the rockets?"

She blinked at him, before looking down at Engineer and Pyro, who ran back to the campfire. The Texan girl had a bright grin on her face as she hurriedly pulled her worker's goggles down.

"Y'all ready?" she called, surprisingly loudly, that Merasmus and Soldier could hear her.

"Affirmative!" Soldier yelled back at her, her voice louder and giddier than before, as she bounced in her place next to Merasmus.

"… Soldier?"

"Fire away!" He heard Engineer cheer, "Yee-haw!"

A fizzing noise filled the air, followed by a high-pitched  _whoosh_ , and then a rocket flew into the air and exploded brightly into a shower of blue light. Merasmus's eyes widened in shock as beside him, Soldier cheered happily, as one after the other, rockets fired into the sky, lighting it up with a myriad of colours.

Merasmus could only stare. This was the first time he had ever seen something like this. He was so transfixed by the sight he never noticed Soldier remove her helmet to look at the fireworks properly, a look of awed joy clear and unabashed on her face.

Beside him, Soldier turned her head to grin at him, only it disappeared when she saw him staring at it in shock rather than awe.

"What, you've never seen fireworks before?" she snickered, punching him in the arm, and Merasmus shook his head.

"No," he admitted, turning to look at Soldier, and jolting slightly to see her helmet gone, and that face was staring back at him again, a lopsided grin on her pale lips, as blue-red-green-yellow-pink-blue-red lights lit up her face into unusually soft shadows. "… No. I haven't."

She blinked at him.

"You don't know what fireworks are? They are  _the_  only way you can celebrate July 4 the American way!" she exclaimed, pumping a fist against her left chest against her heart. "They're rockets you fire into the sky and they explode into colours!" she grinned, "I mean, I don't get  _how_ , Engie would probably know but what's important is that they're AMERICAN," she punctuated each syllable of her nation with a thump of her fist on her chest. "And they are so much better because they are American."

He blinked at her, and then at the fireworks, and back at her.

She continued on, rambling now about how her forefathers fired cannons at some poor asshole's face and how the Declaration of Independence was written with gunpowder dissolved in water or something, but all he could think of was how softer she looked in the coloured lights of the fireworks exploding high above them. How her lips, usually pressed in a thin line, was now softer—fuller. Her eyes were brighter, bigger—the bags beneath them had disappeared. He knew how tired she was from fighting all the robots away from Mann Co., but now, he saw energy back in her body. Sure, she enjoyed the fight, the thrill of killing and getting killed, but this was something else. Something…  _better_ , he thought.

He paused, alarmed, just as Soldier finished off telling the story of how the Boston Tea Party ended with the natives making the English drink saltwater-tea, to realise what he was thinking.

Was he  _really_? Really thinking such things? How preposterous—Soldier was loud, obnoxious, annoying, cute, endearing, lovely…

He stopped. This was hardly anything proper. He needed to say something else.

"Loud noise is hardly any proper way to celebrate something," he replied, and she frowned at him.

"I told you, Americans don't need to be proper! It is not American!" she yelled back at him, "Just like how today I'm wearing your stupid magic heels and—" she stopped in the middle of her speech to start unbuttoning her uniform. Merasmus's eyes widened and he grabbed her hands to stop her.

"What are you doing?!" he yelled, flustered, "Why are you stripping?"

"Because you gave me  _this_ ," she grinned, pulling her uniform's top open to reveal him her bra—in Stars and Stripes design.

Merasmus stared at it—both shocked at the fact that  _he_  actually did that, and  _wow_ , Soldier  _does_  look like a very lovely lady under those clothes—

 _This was getting_ very _improper, very quickly._

"Cover yourself up, for God's sake, this is  _not_  proper of a woman like you, Soldier." he hurriedly said, but she snickered, and shook her head.

"I told you, I'm American. I am  _not_  proper." She grinned, before leaning forward and brushing their lips together, before quickly pulling away. "And  _you_  weren't proper either."

Merasmus stared at her, shocked, as she snickered, before turning to look at the fireworks again.

"If you want to be a sap," she said, not looking at him, but the flush on her cheeks was clear despite the colored lights above them. "Then this is the part where you hold my hand."

Merasmus stopped to think about it for a moment.

"This  _still_  isn't proper." He said, but he took her hand in his anyway, and she smiled.

"Yeah, but it's America's day." She told him. "You don't have to be."

For once in his life, Merasmus couldn't agree more.


End file.
